Philosophy doesn’t have to be daunting. Thanks to the Continuing Education program at Oxford University, you can ease into philosophical thinking by listening to five lectures collectively called Philosophy for Beginners. (Find them on iTunesU in audio and video). Taught by Marianne Talbot, Lecture 1 starts with a “Romp Through the History of Philosophy” and moves in a brief hour from Ancient Greece to the present. Subsequent lectures (usually running about 90 minutes) cover the following topics: logic, ethics, politics, metaphysics, epistemology, and language. For those hankering for more philosophy, I’ve listed below a series of more advanced philosophy courses and also some philosophy podcasts. (You can get more free university courses here and intelligent podcasts here).
Courses
- Consciousness - MP3s here – Susan Stuart, University of Glasgow
- Death - Download Course – Shelly Kagan, Yale
- Existentialism in Literature & Film - iTunes - Feed – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- Heidegger - iTunes - Feed - MP3s – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- Heidegger’s Being & Time - Feed - MP3s – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- Introduction to Practical Reasoning and Critical Analysis of Argument, iTunes – Daniel Coffeen, UC Berkeley
- Kant’s Epistemology - iTunes – Dr Susan Stuarts, University of Glasgow.
- Man, God and Society in Western Literature - iTunes - Feed – Hubert Dreyfus, UC Berkeley
- The Examined Life - iTunes – Greg Reihman, Lehigh University
Podcasts
- Philosophy Bites iTunes Feed Web Site
- A British podcast featuring interviews of top philosophers that delves into some essential philosophical questions — what is the meaning of life? what is the nature of reality? what is evil?, etc.
- Philosophers’ Cafe Feed Web Site
- Comfortable surroundings for vibrant street level discussions on burning issues of the day. No formal philosophy training required; real life experience desired. Come early, stay late. Presented by Simon Fraser University.
- Partially Examined Life iTunes Feed Web Site
- A philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, they pick a short text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy.
Related posts:
What knowledge do we have if we base our knowledge on sterility? Why read, why live for that matter and proclaim knowledge if it is based on ‘just words’? So in other words to know is also very much more to NOT KNOW* which is why quite possible we have a brain that thinks objectively.
That quite possibly needs to be questioned generically if you will? Why submit to that which is already subject to? Here is if you like a paradox of either so called knowledge or actual knowledge which may or may not be connected to ‘words’ or proof of knowledge. Thanks Yvonne